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The Impossible Architecture of Monument Valley

This post was written by my girlfriend, Laura, who is a long-time gamer. She mostly plays on Nintendo platforms, but enjoys the occasional iOS title as well. She’s currently working as a web developer and enjoys many nerdy things including Doctor Who. You can follow her on her Twitter account, @euphorialjc.

Monument Valley is a charming iOS puzzle game from a London developer called ustwo. It was released last Thursday (April 3) and features levels inspired by MC Escher drawings.

The game is fairly short, with a very minimal story and only 10 levels, but what it lacks in length, it makes up for with beautifully crafted sound and crisp, colorful visuals that feel almost reminiscent of TGC’s 2012 hit, Journey. Each level could easily stand alone as a fantastic piece of art for your living room, and there is something very smooth and serene about how the levels move and shift as you work your way through its puzzles and optical illusions.

Monument Valley is controlled by tapping the screen, which will send the main character (Princess Ida) to the area you’ve chosen. The levels require you to move and rotate pieces of the environment in unexpected ways to create new platforms and accessible areas – ones that couldn’t possibly exist in our reality (think Penrose Stairs). The mind-bending nature of the puzzles forces you to think outside the parameters of logic and move the character in ways that defy gravity in order to progress.

As a former art student, I thoroughly enjoyed playing through Monument Valley, although with a price point of $3.99, I found myself a bit disappointed with the amount of content. I managed to beat the game in only a few hours. With whimsical charm and deep roots in art history, Monument Valley is definitely an example of quality over quantity.